London (England) -- Description and travel; London (England) -- History -- 18th century
If they meet with any persons they suspect of ill designs, quarrelsome
people, or lewd women in the streets, they are empowered to carry them
before the constable at his watch-house, who confines them till morning,
when they are brought before a justice of the peace, who commits them to
prison or releases them, according as the circumstances of the case are.
Mobs and tumults were formerly very terrible in this great city; not only
private men have been insulted and abused, and their houses demolished,
but even the Court and Parliament have been influenced or awed by them.
But there is now seldom seen a multitude of people assembled, unless it
be to attend some malefactor to his execution, or to pelt a villain in
the pillory, the last of which being an outrage that the Government has
ever seemed to wink at; and it is observed by some that the mob are
pretty just upon these occasions; they seldom falling upon any but
notorious rascals, such as are guilty of perjury, forgery, scandalous
practices, or keeping of low houses, and these with rotten eggs, apples,
and turnips, they frequently maul unmercifully, unless the offender has
money enough to bribe the constables and officers to protect him.
The London inns, though they are as commodious for the most part as those
we meet with in other places, yet few people choose to take up their
quarters in them for any long time; for, if their business requires them
to make any stay in London, they choose to leave their horses at the inn
or some livery-stable, and take lodgings in a private house. At livery
stables they lodge no travellers, only take care of their horses, which
fare better here than usually at inns; and at these places it is that
gentlemen hire saddle-horses for a journey. At the best of them are
found very good horses and furniture: they will let out a good horse for
4s. a day, and an ordinary hackney for 2s. 6d., and for 5s. you may have
a hunter for the city hounds have the liberty of hunting; in Enfield
Chase and round the town, and go out constantly every week in the season,
followed by a great many young gentlemen and tradesmen. They have an
opportunity also of hunting with the King’s hounds at Richmond and
Windsor: and such exercises seem very necessary for people who are
constantly in London, and eat and drink as plentifully as any people in
the world. And now I am speaking of hired horses, I cannot avoid taking
notice of the vast number of coach-horses that are kept to be let out to
noblemen or gentlemen, to carry or bring them to and from the distant
parts of the kingdom, or to supply the undertakers of funerals with
horses for their coaches and hearses. There are some of these men that
keep several hundreds of horses, with coaches, coachmen, and a complete
equipage, that will be ready at a day’s warning to attend a gentleman to
any part of England. These people also are great jockeys. They go to
all the fairs in the country and buy up horses, with which they furnish
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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